Hideo Kojima Aims For More Personal Studio With Small Crew
Hideo Kojima and his “leaving” Konami was one of the major stories in 2015, and went well into the beginning of 2016. Now though, he’s set up his new studio, and at DICE he revealed to IGN what he wants from the studio. First and foremost? A smaller team, that way he can easily work with them all and get the best product possible:
“There was a time that I had a team that was growing over 200 people, and at that point this methodology proved to be too difficult. It was impossible to be together and polish everything,” he said. “For this new studio, I definitely want to keep the size of the team somewhat limited.”
He noted however that he didn’t want this to seem like a traditional Japanese studio:
“In Japanese studios, no matter what kind of game you’re developing, you get in and they all feel the same,” he said. “It feels like tight spaces, military discipline. There are so many companies like this, previous experiences that were like this. If you want to make something that has worldwide reach and develops creativity, it doesn’t have to be that way. “
His inspirations for a smaller, more intimate, studio was developers like Media Molecule:
“All studios were unique, and they were all amazing, but probably the one that made the biggest impression on me was Media Molecule,” he said. “The environment that they have in the workplace is really…they almost feel like a family. One of the things that felt like ‘this is the way it has to be’ was, from the entrance, you go in, and we walked just one simple round of where the developers are, and the feeling that we got from there definitely matched the product that they’re trying to create. There was definitely a match in there.”